We were at the embassy the last time and I know you took care of the recordings.”
“You do?” After locking the doors, he wrapped an arm around her waist and ushered her back to his mother’s house.
“Yes, because I went to have them erased and was told the cameras weren’t even on.”
“How about that.” He stopped moving when he noticed the large screen in the middle of the park. “How did they get that information?” Heather looked up and saw her picture flashing across the screen. They were talking about the intensive training she had been going through since his apartment had been vandalized. Somehow they knew, as she did, that the exercise tomorrow was to test her. “Oh, boy, that is going to make my mate very angry.”
He looked at her, wondering why she kept speaking of him as two different people. “And what do you think your instructor will do?”
“I’d like to think he would take this opportunity to show how good he is at training and what an apt student the mate of the future leader on this planet is. That she can prove that she is up to the challenge despite the publicity.”
He didn’t say anything, just started moving again. His arm still around her urged her to walk with him.
Who would dare leak this information? None of the team would because they knew he would extract a hard payment for betraying the team. They learned that a long time ago. Besides, he had only informed them of the exercise just before he released them. This information looked a few hours old. Heather had been by his side the whole time so she couldn’t have and she hated that kind of attention anyway. Who else did he tell?
His legs started moving faster when he realized who the culprit was.
He released his hold on Heather when she couldn’t keep up with his quick angry stride. He charged through the main door, yelling at the first person he saw. “Where is she?”
“I’m right here, dear.” His mother must have anticipated him.
“How could you?”
“What?” She walked deeper into the main hall of her home, smiling at Heather when she ran in, trying to keep up with Storm.
“Besides having to set aside the land for the exercise and the equipment they would use I kept this information from everyone. The council were the only other people I told my plans to.”
“I didn’t say anything to the news people.”
“But someone from the council did.” He couldn’t believe they would put his mate in jeopardy like this.
She shrugged. “You know I don’t speak for them nor they for me. Do you want me to call an emergency meeting?”
“No.” Heather spoke up. “The damage is done. Let’s not make it worse by getting angry.” She then took him by the hand and practically dragged him into their rooms.
“You don’t speak for me.” He pounded on their bedroom door.
“Even when I know you’re going to make a mistake and I’m trying to save you from it?” She jammed her hands on her hips. “If you want to make a fool of yourself go right ahead. All you will do is tell these people that you have no faith in me and they shouldn’t either. Is that what you want?”
“I want you to be safe.” He stepped close to her.
Storm found her anger breathtaking. Her eyes snapped fire. The intensity there mesmerized him. He went to touch her.
“Oh, hell, no.” She darted behind the couch. “None of that I must dominate you to prove my manhood stuff.”
“But I’m so good at it.” He wanted to laugh at her words. She knew him so well. That was what he was thinking. Her body language said her pride was speaking and if he could overcome her pride he’d get his way.
Of course he would have to set his pride aside too and that was what was wounded here. He knew she could do the job. He wouldn’t allow her to participate tomorrow if he didn’t think she could do it but she shouldn’t even have to face this situation. She was his mate and he should be able to protect her properly.
And there it was, the slight smile. She agreed with him. She did keep dodging him though. He went one way she went another. Even when he tried a few different tactics to catch her off guard she was ready for him.
He needed to distract her. What was the one thing that always worked?
He smiled as his fingers opened the seam of his uniform and he peeled it off.
“You have to fight fair.” Her gaze went from his face to his naked body and back again.
“It was cumbersome.” He took a step toward her.
She didn’t lose focus and kept moving away from him. “I could do the same thing, except it seems to have the opposite effect. You become hyper focused on whatever I expose.”
“Really? Try it and let’s see.” His anger had vanished the moment he saw the smile brighten. He found an opening and made a grab for her. She almost got away but he had a hold of the back of her uniform and slowly pulled her back to him. “So what should I expose first?”
“My feet?” She turned to face him. “The shoes do need to come off.”
“True, but not a part of you I’m interested in right now.” He slid his hands up her arms to her neckline. His fingers rested against her collarbone.
“I’m pretty methodical in my ways. I like starting at the top and working my way down.”
He parted her top in one swift movement. “I help design these uniforms so I know how they go together.” His fingers relished the feel of her soft skin. “Helps in moments like this.”
“Do this a lot?” She watched his hands for a moment before she looked up at him.
“What?” He looked into her violet eyes. She was serious.
“Remove clothing from your female warriors.”
“The uniform is a unisex garment.” His fingers continued to caress her skin, but he didn’t move on to anything else. He didn’t want to make light of her question. “It was created with the doctors in mind. The easy in and out is for treating wounds. I just figured out this extra little perk because of you.” She didn’t say anything but he knew something bothered her. “What is it?” “I want to do well tomorrow.” She let out a shaky breath.
“You’ll be fine.” He started to follow the seam of the uniform all the way down but found her hands on top of his. “Why does this bother you so much?”
“Because I don’t want to disappoint you.”
“What makes you think you would disappoint me?” He didn’t realize she was so worried about this. “You have been an exemplary student. You’ve far exceeded any expectations I had for you.”
“And if I make one misstep I will never hear the end of it.” She sighed as she stepped away from him. “I have done thousands of missions and have had things go wrong and handled the problem easily, but knowing you are going to be there to judge me has me second guessing everything.”
“Heather, I never meant to undermine your belief in yourself.” He stepped close again and took her face in his hands. He wanted to be sure she continued to look at him. She needed to know he was serious. “I’ve read your file. You have more commendations than any of my people. You have been in twice as many situations than any of my most seasoned soldiers. I want you at my back anytime, anywhere.”
A single tear ran down her cheek. He brushed it aside with his thumb.
“You’re beautiful, strong and the most precious thing I have. I push you because I can’t control and stop the things that could hurt you. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
Another tear trickled down her cheek before she closed the distance between them. In one quick move she captured him in a deep kiss as she shrugged her way out of the top of the uniform. She became the aggressor this time. Wanting him to possess her, show her how much he cared for her.
He was happy to oblige. He eased the seals of her uniform open in silence. The only sound in the room was their breathing. Storm felt her nimble fingers wrap around his staff and he sucked in his breath. He brushed a nail across the tips of her breasts, causing the same reaction.
The bed was too fa
r so he lowered them to the carpet. Heather’s hand pressed against his chest. He laid down, his hand touching her softly, a brush against the underside of her breast, across her stomach and around her hip.
She straddled him and slid him home, her head back and body arched.
She was exposed to him. Vulnerable to his will. His hand went to her hips first, helping her set a rhythm that worked for them both, then he slid his fingers into her folds, looking and finding the button that set her off every time. His other hands played where they landed. Tickling her navel, caressing her breasts. Whatever she needed to heighten the experience.
She was getting close. He could feel it. Storm pulled her down toward him and rolled them over. Her silent communication begged him to take over, make this mindless for her. She was his and needed to feel him possess her. Storm changed the tempo of the strokes. He slowed them down, much to her frustration and made them deeper much to her delight. He could feel her body welcome him every time he surged in, those wonderful muscles of hers tightening against him. Her hips tried to urge him to move faster, but he would have none of that. He took his time. Pleasure her in a way she would never forget.
He brought her back to the edge again. The little tremors had started with each stroke. Her hands were at his backside, urging him, begging him to give her what she wanted. He reveled the feel of them on his body.
He was ready this time. Three strokes would be all that it would take to send them both to their orgasms. He took her face in his hands and placed a soft kiss on each side of her mouth.
“You are the air I breathe, the light in my life. My world.” He entered her one last time and felt his world crack. Joy raced through him when he felt her body stiffen around him. They were caught in a vortex as sensations overwhelmed him. He had never experienced sex like this before. It was like he was in her body and she was in his.
More tears slid from her eyes.
“Why are you crying?”
“That was profound.” She laughed as she wiped the tears from her eyes. “I have never felt that before. It was as if we were sharing each other’s orgasm.”
“I felt that too.” He cradled her in his arms, not ready to move or break the spell they were wrapped in. “But I have noticed we seem to have a silent communication going on between us. We seem to know what the other wants or needs before they have to say anything.” She shifted a leg and found him growing inside her again. “I see what you mean. I was wondering if we could try that again to see if we’ll have the same experience.”
“You do realize if your experiment works I’ll never leave you alone.” He closed his eyes when she slid a leg up around his hip. How did she arouse him so easily?
“You don’t leave me alone now. How would this be different?” She closed her eyes and licked her lips when he pulled out and surged back in again.“I’d never pull out.”
****
Heather stood next to her air cycle, listening to the last minute instructions for their exercise. She knew that no matter what they were told, she was going to be the one truly tested. How it would be done was her big question? Storm hadn’t hinted it to anyone.
They were given permission to take off.
She pulled her helmet on and locked the suit together. The uniform was very versatile. Adding the helmet and gloves allowed them to seal the suit so it could be used in any hostile environment, underwater, non-breathable air. The person inside would be totally protected. She could also dial up the strength of the armor built into the suit to its highest protection.
The moment she sealed the suit her holographic readout popped up inside her helmet. It took a few seconds for her to adjust but then it became just another extension of her suit. She could hear commands coming through the ear piece. The chatter became background noise as she ran through her check points.
She climbed onto the bike and took off. The bike was fun. Easy to maneuver. A slight turn to the right or left and the bike took off in that direction. She had only ridden one in simulation before this and she liked the freedom she felt with it. She would have continued to play with it except they were watching their every move and it didn’t take Storm very long before he reminded her of that.
She headed in the direction of the challenge, weaving her way through the wooded area. She heard another reprimand when she darted between a few trees when she should have gone straight through. Once she passed a certain point she had to dodge drones designed to bring down their cycles.
They weren’t a surprise to her and were easy to outrun in the beginning, but suddenly they were coming from in front of her. Finding them hard to dodge, she tried to use the weapons on the bike to find they hadn’t been loaded.
Great. How was she supposed to fight these stupid things?
“Who’s smart idea was it to have the drone come at you and not give you any way to defend yourself?” She shouted into her mike. She used evasive maneuvers to try to keep out of the range of fire but she found it a bit hard to talk and fly at the same time.
“What are you talking about? Each bike has blanks designed to stop the drones from attacking.” She heard Storm’s voice in her ear.
“Well they skipped one. I have no weapons and...” She shifted her bike to the right to avoid another tree and spotted the drone coming at her that she hadn’t seen before. “Oh crap.”
This one was going to hit the bike dead on. There was no way for her to avoid it. She had seconds to get herself safely out of the way. She launched herself off the bike and turned the suit up to its highest settings. The suit should protect her from a one hundred and twenty foot drop and since she was only up about eighty feet she should be okay. Her descent would be sharp and she would have no control over her trajectory but the area was pretty clear.
The bike exploded, pushing her back a little, then she suddenly had to avoid the flying shrapnel. Something she hadn’t thought about when she first pushed off the bike. Pieces whizzed by her head, making her shift her body and changing the direction she had been falling. Pain exploded in her shoulder when one piece found her. It knocked her a little further off course and leaves of branches slapped her helmet.
Heather wanted to check to see if the suit had been breached but at the highest setting she couldn’t move her arm behind her head until she was stationary and could move the setting down again. Any command she could try to give it now would be overridden by the safety protocol built into the suit. The ground was coming up at her pretty fast and she felt like a rocket heading straight into it. She crashed through a few more branches before she hit a clear area where she could see the ground once again. She hoped that was all she had to deal with.
Voices sounded in her head, demanding a response. Along with the weird alarm she kept hearing inside the suit. The effort to speak through the pain took its toll. She answered best she could. “Bike is gone. Will have to make it to the checkpoint on foot.”
She could still hear them wanting to know what was going on, Storm’s voice urgent in its demand. That blow must have knocked out her mike so they couldn’t hear anything she had said. She spotted another problem.
There was a large limb coming at her very fast and she couldn’t move out of the way.
“This is going to hurt.” She closed her eyes and hoped she would survive the blow.
Chapter 12
“Somebody talk to me.” Storm watched the data stream onto the screen. It didn’t explain what caused the bike to explode or the silence from Heather they were now dealing with. Her life signs were still on the screen but nothing else. “What’s happening out there?” Silence filled the command center when the data stream suddenly stopped. No life signs from her, no data at all.
“I want answers. Now!”
“Sir, we’re still trying to get the information for you. All we know is that her bike exploded and she turned her suit up to maximum.”
“I saw that part.” He growled at the man who spoke. “I want to know why. Her bike was supposed to break down
, not explode in mid-air. Who loaded her bike? Why didn’t she have weapons? And why don’t I see any medical information coming up on the screen.”
“Seconds before everything went out she took a blow somewhere in the midsection.” The doctor moved data from one screen to the main one Storm was looking at. “It took out the medical reader. That’s why we have no readings.”
“What about the backup? That damn helmet should be giving us something.”
“Your family doctor hasn’t been able to use a backup on her, sir. She keeps killing conventional power sources,” the doctor said. “But the blow she took wasn’t life threatening.”
“And the helmet?”
“Also took a blow. We stopped getting that data about a minute before.
It’s why we aren’t getting any communication from her.”
“Send the team back to where we got the last set of readings. Find her and bring her home.”
****
Heather opened her eyes and found her body filled with pain. “That hurt.” She moved her fingers slowly to touch the armor settings in her wrist and brought it down so she could move. Her ribs hurt like hell. Probably broke as least two of them from the pain she felt. She found her right arm hard to move as well from the first blow.
She reached behind her and found the suit intact. That was good.
Everything else seemed to be in working order. Standing, she found simple moments excruciating and set the medical setting on her suit to help take the pressure off her body. It tightened around her ribs which made her lose her breath for a moment before she was able to adjust. It also immobilized her shoulder so she wouldn’t do any extra damage to it until she could be examined.
Storm had to be going crazy. All of her readings had stopped flashing inside her helmet when she hit the branch so she knew they had no idea what happened to her. Her medical reader was gone too. She had no idea where it could be.
Time to get to work. She checked the perimeter for traps and parts of her bike. Somewhere on it should be a beacon and a med kit. If she could find the right part. Then she’d be able to assess the damage she did, maybe repair enough to take some of the pain away.
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